One of our professional mentors, Hafsa Daware, is an expert in tax as well as a Chartered Accountant. Earlier this year, she wrote an article on careers in the Tax Profession for the IntegriTAX section of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants’ (SAICA) Accountancy SA magazine. She describes her profession as “lucrative, inspiring, challenging and versatile”, writing that she has “always had a passion for tax, and value[s] the breadth and depth of what I have been able to learn over the years from all the disciplines that I have been privileged to work with”. Such cross-functional collaboration is fundamental as “understanding a business from all angles is critical to effectively advise and guide it from a tax point of view”.

​Read more for Hafsa’s thoughts on the skills required of tax professionals, the wider understanding of commercial aspects you can build through working on tax matters, the areas and roles tax professionals can work in, and some lessons from the business and tax authority perspectives.

​Given my background and because a number of our members are investment professionals (including Chartered Financial Analysts), I tend to write about investment-related topics fairly often. My perspective on the world is to some extent coloured by my investment training, and I think a number of investment topics have applicability more broadly too – including the focus of this post: our own growth rates.

I also wrote about models (such as financial models) being representations of reality in our post on Professional & Personal Development Cycles. One of the central models in investments is the Dividend Discount Model. It is used, along with other more complex techniques, to value the shares of a company. It is based on the theory that a share is worth the sum of all the company’s future dividend payments, discounted back to today i.e. the net present value of the future earnings that holders of the shares actually receive as dividend payouts.

Read more to explore this valuation model, think about intercepts, slopes and reinvestment, and consider with us a thought experiment on our own professional growth rates and future earnings. Please do build on the ideas mooted in the comments.

Our recent article on reflective practice, "Professional Reflection: Learning through Experience", discussed the value of reflection in our Continuing Professional Development (CPD). It considered a number of professions encouraging reflective practice such as the healthcare/medical, teaching/education, and actuarial and accounting professions, and described some practical frameworks for reflection. 

While collaboration and feedback are inherent in some professions, others may view reflective practice as a solitary activity. There can be value in forming your own opinions first, but at Protagion we believe strongly that working with others is fundamental to our professional development, including reflecting and discussing together. 

Christopher Johns, a professor of nursing, in “Guided reflection: a narrative approach to advancing professional practice”* argued that the act of sharing reflection with a guide, colleague or mentor enables the experience to become learned knowledge at a faster rate than reflecting alone. 

​Read more for our brief thoughts on feedback, followed by more detailed exploration of “reflective practice discussions”, part of some professions’ CPD requirements i.e. their members are required to discuss their professional development with others. We look into who the reflective practice / diffraction discussion could be held with, the general elements of the discussion, and end with specific examples of possible questions to explore between the professional and the discussion partner.